Facebook Marketing – how to improve your post engagement

Facebook Marketing – one easy tweak to make to your posts more engaging

it takes just a few seconds!

Seriously – just a few seconds – that’s all it takes.

Here’s a quick video to help. Below the video is the nuts-n-bolts with ideas and how-to.

Facebook and “social” are all about engagement

Facebook and the other digital platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram) all work on an extremely powerful algorithm.

An algorithm is very long and sophisticated mathematical formulaic set of rules that decides who gets to see what.

This is important to you because it decides who gets to see what with your Facebook (and other online) commentary.

It bases (pretty much) all decisions it makes as to whether people are engaged with what you’re writing. Plus, add that to the fact that Facebook is a business and wants to encourage you (force you?) to spend more money with it … well, in short it means that your posts don’t get seen.

Facebook Metric: “Total Reach”

Total Reach is the number of timelines your post reached. It is not the number of people who saw your post.

Think about your own Facebook timeline. How often do you scroll through absolutely everything in your news feed to see which pages you follow have posted, and which of your (distant) friends or friends-of-friends have posted?

You may undertake this huge task rarely, if at all.

Like you, your page’s followers also cannot be bothered scrolling through everything in their news feeds and timelines.

Conversation is what you’re after

In marketing speak this is referred to as engagement. You’ve probably heard the term before. You may even have got it confused with total reach and therefore thought you were doing pretty good with your Facebook marketing.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble! {really! I am!}

How to regard Facebook

Think of Facebook like being in a cafe or a pub. Hopefully, you wouldn’t rush in, dump something on someone’s lap and run away.

But yet that’s exactly what you could inadvertently be doing. Online. On Facebook.

Every time you create a post on Facebook without a encouraging active participation you’ve just done exactly that (metaphorically speaking).

Think back to the Facebook posts that you respond to (in other words you have some level of active participation) – it’s highly likely the “poster” has encouraged you to respond. To play. To reply.

Likes don’t count as “engagement”

I’m sorry but “likes” don’t count as engagement. It takes no effort to hit the like button.

Think about why you hit ‘like’. Chances are high that you just want to let someone know you’ve seen the post… But you’ve got nothing to say because…?

Encourage active participation on Facebook

This is one of those simple-but-not-necessarily-easy things to do. But there are a few things you can do to encourage engagement & active participation.

Post regularly

Again – think of the cafe scenario. If people know you’re going to be having coffee at, say 0700 every morning, they’ll know to look at for you at that time.

Being random in your posting frequency and time of day is well, random. Which means you’ll get random results.

Post when people are around

Fortunately, with Facebook Insights (where you can see the analytical metrics going in behind the scenes for your Facebook activity) it’s easy to determine the best time of day for your posts.

When are “your” people checking out Facebook?

Early morning, before work and “drive time” – some check their timeline before they even get up or while on their commute to work.

property management & investing (go easy on these – the majority of people are not property investors)

tips to save a few dollars (unless you’re aiming for the top end of the market – posts of this nature probably won’t spin their wheels at all)

kitchen, bathroom, laundry remodels

interior design trends and how-tos

your latest listings

Notice how your latest listings are at the bottom of that list??!!??

Again: just like you wouldn’t go into a cafe and shout about your listings without first building rapport, neither should all your posts on Facebook be sell! sell! sell!

Use pictures: images, graphics, photos

Posts with graphics are more likely to capture someone’s attention than a block of text only.

Get into the habit of taking your own photos while you’re out and about. Most smartphones on the market have sophisticated cameras inbuilt so that even the most un-creative person can take some pretty good looking photos.

Please – do not steal someone else’s photos by using something you found on the internet without giving the owner of the image credit! That is theft! You wouldn’t like someone using your photos without credit back to you so don’t be rude by doing it yourself. And just because “everyone” does it does not make it okay! {my rant on that topic is over}

Post with a question or an opinion

When you do post ask a question or give an opinion.

Both of these give people something to respond to.

Tell them why you’ve posted the post:

Did it strike a chord?

What did you not/like about it?

What tickled your fancy?

This gives people something to relate to, think about and react / respond to.

Ask questions:

Share your stance / opinion and ask theirs

Do they dis/agree? why? (share your opinion)

Have they ever encountered “this”? When?

Ask them to take a stand:

Yes / no?

Black / White?

Left / right?

Unfortunately and sadly I cannot guarantee that every single follower will play along with you, but I can guarantee that those who see your post are more likely to respond than if you didn’t encourage them to.

Action Steps

I promised it would only take a few seconds to improve the likelihood of increased engagement on your Facebook page. Here it is:

#1

always post with a question or instruction asking for an opinion (provided you have played the game yourself as well!).

If you would like to increase the opportunity for further improvements on engagement, then taking the following steps will also help (but these will take more than a few seconds):

#2

check out your Facebook Insights to see which posts receive the most reach and then look for common denominators:

time of day?

type of post?

what did you do different?

#3

use images / photos / pictures / graphics

#4

post consistently – turn up at the same time (the best time for your followers). You want to be seen as reliable.

#5

let your personality shine through. Remember: think of Facebook like a cafe – you want to be seen as personable!

Reach out now: send me an email – I promise to respond to your email personally – tell me about just one thing you’d like to achieve and/or your biggest headache / frustration in relation to your database and let’s see how if I can help you make it better.

I promise to respond to you personally. I can’t wait to hear from you!

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